Pieces of the Sky [Bonus Tracks] (CD)

Emmylou Harris

1 Used

Condition

Format

Price

Media Condition: Very Good CD

Comments: Review
Contrary to legend, it was Chris Hillman, not Gram Parsons, who discovered Emmylou singing at a Washington DC club in 1971; and while Hillman seriously considered offering her the position Gram had recently vacated in the Flying Burrito Brothers, it is to his eternal credit that he recognized a perfect match when he heard it. Chris recommended Emmylou to Gram for the latter’s solo project. They met, and it was beyond chemistry. It was fusion. Emmylou had some degree of immersion in country music, but Gram Parsons took her to the River of Jordon. He baptized her in the sounds of a raw, ecstatic, heartfelt America to which even Nashville was deaf; and in return? In return, Emmylou Harris graced her duets with Gram with a voice that fluttered on the wings of angels. She elevated him as an artist. With Emmylou, Gram Parsons ascended. Within the brief, brilliant trajectory of two and a half LPs, Gram and Emmylou so thoroughly redefined country music that they created a new genre, a new American music. And when Gram overdosed in that desert motel, Emmylou was annihilated, as an artist, and as a woman. Gram’s label, Reprise, recognized Emmylou’s immense talent and signed her as a solo artist, with the stipulation that she assemble an extraordinary backing band. This presented no problem; Gram had been poised on the brink of superstardom, and his band was cherry-picked from the best musicians in the business, starting with the legendary guitarist James Burton. These guys were taking time off from backing Elvis to play with Gram, and they stuck with Emmylou for her debut. Pieces of the Sky was released in 1975, and it made her a star. She learned well from Gram’s pan-genre, polyglot tastes, and her material ranges from the Louvin Brothers to Merle Haggard to the Beatles, but the track that truly shines is the one she wrote on her own. “Boulder to Birmingham” is a lifetime of soaring grief and profound, inextinguishable flames; replete in cinematic, Biblical imagery; encased in three minutes and thirty-five seconds of crystalline amber. Emmylou Harris says goodbye to Gram Parsons in this song, and then with care and craft and elegance, she carries the privilege and burden of his legacy into the mainstream of country music; and she becomes the superstar that Gram could have been; and then, over the decades, she becomes a matriarch of the genre, a Grand Dame; and eventually she is inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, because she and Gram truly did create a new genre, a new American music. And if “Boulder to Birmingham” still resonates so many decades later, with unique, reverberant sorrow, it’s not for something lost, for specters of the past; it’s for something that should be, but isn’t. It’s an elegy for the ghosts of the present.
-Jeff Hunt